I wish Noteflight would...

microtones

I suggest that the feature of microtones be added to noteflight. One feature could be quartert tones (which can be used on standard music notation). Another addition may be the feature of Sonido 13 notation to allow even smaller microtones

My suggestion would be for Noteflight to be able to offset the tuning of each note in cents at the beginning of the score and have the midi playback reflect those tunings. This would allow so much flexibility for ethnomusicological purposes or for microtonal experimentation.

1. Have the ability to edit parameters of individual notes or selections of multiple notes. Among the parameters that could be adjusted in a tabbed dialog box that would result would include note playback duration (for precisely controlling staccato and the like) and other performance articulations, but also specify the pitch microtuning adjustment as either a real number of cents (positive = tuned sharp, negative = tuned flat, 100.00 = one 12tET semitone) or tuning ratios expressed as an improper fraction with numerator greater than denominator, such as “3/2” for a true Just Intonation Perfect Fifth (Third Harmonic) which would roughly equal +1.96¢.

2. Alternatively or additionally, allow the tuning to be specified at the score level and automatically applied. Tunings could be created, edited, saved, and loaded from a library of common and shared user-created tunings. This wouldn’t work for Barbershop which often requires the same note (on paper, anyway) to have multiple different tunings based on what the underlying chord is, but would for Baroque and others using medieval fixed tunings such as Meantone or Kirnberger III.

Ability to specify fine tuning of individual notes, either in a defined microtuned scale or on a per-note basis (preferably both).

This is not the same as using a different tuning base than A=440hz. It means being able to adjust the tuning of notes ± an integer or (preferrably) real number of cents (100ths of a 12tET [twelve-tone even tempered, the modern default tuning scale of MIDI]) individually.

This is absolutely vital to a wide variety of musical genres. Bach and other Baroque music for instance sounds just plain wrong in 12tET scale. Various ethnic and other non-Western musical styles have their own tunings including quartertones and such, Barbershop uses pure harmonic tuning to get the overtones and undertones that make chords “ring” and this simply isn’t possible with 12tET.

MIDI provides several ways to implement this on playback. If each part is on a different MIDI channel, you can use Pitch Bend events. Most modern MIDI instruments also support the later MIDI Tuning Spec (you can read about that on the official MIDI specs website) which doesn’t require putting each non-octave note per chord on its own channel.

There are notes like the Maxima that are a total of 32 beats, and a Breve is 8 beats. A Demisemihemisemidemi is 1/256 beats. I've seen the demisemihemisemidemi on scores, but I'm not sure how to get it. Also, quarter tones would be cool. For those who don't know, a quarter tone are things like half sharp, flat in a half, triple flat. Things like that.

I was really disappointed to find that Noteflight doesn't have half-sharps and half-flats! And I was very surprised to see that double-dotted notes are impossible. Adding these things would create ease for composers and eliminate the need for many otherwise useless notes that could be replaced with a simple dot. Half-flats are my life when it comes to music; I haven't been able to make a REAL song on Noteflight yet. :(